A Message from Mrs. Hayes

Before Thanksgiving, I read More by I.C. Springman and illustrated by Brian Lies. This book incorporates informational text in a story – an exciting mix! The Common Core is requiring us to read more informational text to our students. Studies have shown that American students struggle with informational text, especially when they reach high school and college. So, we are starting early!

More tells the story of a crow who starts with “nothing.” He and his friend mouse then start collecting. First, they have “something”: a marble. Then they add a Lego brick and a coin – “a few.” Suddenly, they have “several”: a coin, a Lego brick and a marble. They add “more, more, more.”

This student shares a favorite scene, as the crow is filling up the nest with treasures.

This child shares a favorite character from the book.

This student shows the crow and adds the words – “more, more” as crow is collecting.

This student shows Crow and Mouse and adds the words “more,” and “too much.”

One student pointed out that the message of the story is that you can collect too many things and then before you know you have too much stuff. In the story the crow’s tree limb is breaking from the weight of a nest overfilled with treasures. “Enough!” Mouse says.

Several of the words from the book – enough, few, several, less, plenty – were added to our kindergarten Word Wall in the Community Room. Kindergarten words are in blue. I am encouraging the students to use these words in our writing and speaking. The other teams have words, too. Come check them out!



Reading Buddies

 We are lucky enough to have two eighth graders come read with us two times a week! These students CHOSE to work with us as part of their eighth grade exit goals. They each read two books to 2  kindergarten students with the goal of helping us learn how to read! Currently, they are focusing on Concepts About Print, which includes knowledge of  things like understanding that the print contains the message, which way to read (left to right and top to bottom), return sweep, etc.

Thanksgiving Poem

This is a poem we read together in Music class with Mrs. Zamore:

Thanksgiving

Thank you for all my hands  can hold,

Apples red and melons gold.

Yellow corn both ripe and sweet,

Peas and Beans so good to eat!

PBIS

We have counted our stars and have earned a class reward!!! We voted and the reward with the most votes was "Movie Matinee!" So, on Friday, we will watch a movie on the projector in our classroom, complete with popcorn! Great job Folsom Kindergarten!

Beginning Sounds

 We are listening and identifying beginning sounds with this picture sort game. Here are the student directions:

1. Lay out the letter strips.
2. Choose a picture. Say the name.
3. Listen for the beginning sound. Put the card next to the correct letter.
4. Match all the pictures to the correct letters.
5. Turn over the pictures to check your answers.
6. Complete the activity sheet.

This cooperative activity provides us with the opportunity to learn and practice the following common core standard:

RF.K.2d: Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in CVC words

Smile!

Pattern Block Quilts

 We used technology today with our exploration of pattern blocks. Technology connections are computer activities that reinforce and extend some of the lessons and activities in Bridges (our math program). These computer activities enable kindergartners to handle pattern blocks and simple quilt blocks that aren't possible with physical manipulatives.

Library Pictures

Here is one student's favorite character.

Here is a student's favorite character and the setting!

One student's favorite character was "Cat."

Library

A message from Mrs. Hayes . . .

Thursday, kindergartners and I read Olive and the Big Secret by Tor Freeman. The children told me what Mrs. Couture had taught them about secrets, including that feelings get hurt when people tell secrets and sometimes then friends won’t play with you. Last week, I introduced the concept of setting to the students by reading Mem Fox’s books, Guess What? and Boo to a Goose.

This week the students drew their favorite character from Olive and the Big Secret as well as the setting. Some of your children are writing labels on their drawings like Donald Crews does in his books. Many of your children know that the author writes the words and the illustrator creates the pictures.

One student figured out Olive’s secret – “she loves him!” -- even though the author kept the secret! She was able to point to the evidence – the end papers – which show Olive’s friend Molly looking dreamy-eyed with hearts coming from her head in the beginning of the book and then … with more hearts coming from her head as she is leaning toward Ziggy at the end of the book.

Please remember that if your child forgets to bring library books back on Thursdays -- our designated library day -- that it's OK to bring them back on Fridays (or any other day) and then check out the books selected during library time! Read, read, read!

Echo In The Box

During math we practiced describing the location of an object relative to another by following and giving directions using positional terms such as in, out, over, under, above, below, and so on. We started our circle with a box containing a mystery item inside. In order to find out what was in the box students asked questions, but only questions that could be answered with "yes" or "no." 15 questions were allowed. We kept track of how many questions we had asked with 3 stacks of 5 unifix cubes. When a question was asked, we took a cube away. After 5 questions a clue was provided about the item, and then we continued with questions until we were out of unifix cubes. Here are some of the questions students asked:

• Can we play with it?
• Is it red?
• What shape is it?
• Is it something we can wear?

We wrote down the answers to our questions so we had a great list at the end to help us guess the item in the box. It was Mama Echo, our puppet from Fundations!!!

Pattern Block Designs

Our new math work place this week is Pattern Block Designs. In this activity students copy pattern block designs from printed cards, first with real blocks, and then with pattern block stickers. This moves us from creating designs to reproducing them. We are able to move from the 2-dimensional flat card to 3-dimensional blocks, and then back to 2-dimensional recordings with stickers. Moving back and forth between pictures and objects is part of learning to create representations, a skill viewed as increasingly important in the world of math education. While completing this activity we are practicing the following skills:

• Recognizing and naming shapes
• Counting
• Taking shapes apart and fitting them back together
• Exploring relationships between various shapes

Dramatic Play Is Open!

 We opened dramatic play today! It was very exciting, although hard to wait for a turn. Here is some information about the benefits of dramatic play that I found in an article on www.pbs.org written by Tammy R. Bensen, Ed.D.

Benefits of play in the classroom include:

• Physical: increase in strength, overall fitness, motor skill development, health;
• Cognitive: increase in skills such as problem solving, creative thinking, planning, organizing, language, and overall academic success;
• Social and Emotional: enhanced development of cooperation, sharing, turn taking, less egocentrism, increase in prosocial values and self esteem, practice of appropriate social roles.

November Calendar Pattern

With November comes flying butterfly calendar markers in the kindergarten! This set of calendar markers depicts butterflies in different positions thereby providing us with opportunities to use and  model words that indicate direction: up, down, to the right, and to the left. Throughout the month we will use the butterflies to mark each day  in November. Activities in our November number corner will allow us to practice the following skills & concepts;

• model and use words indicating relative position, direction, and distance
• use the directional words left and right to describe movement
• identify, describe, and extend simple patterns.

Other components of November Number Corner include recording how may days of school in November with weather cards, recording each day on a ten frame as well as a weather graph, and adding a link to our "links in school" and rainbow number line. We discovered today that we have been in kindergarten for 45 days already!!!!